"Turner's sister is looking where she shouldn't," Reed said. "I want to know who is feeding her information."
"She's a reporter," Phillips replied. "Reporters ask questions."
"Reporters don't suddenly find old Clearwater records unless somebody points them there."
Daniels shifted in his chair. "Captain, about the arrest video. There was a store across the street. If their cameras were working—"
"We've already handled that," Reed snapped. "You need to worry about your report matching what you remember."
Phillips watched Daniels closely. He had known Reed long enough to recognize when pressure was pushing the captain toward unnecessary mistakes. For years, the operation survived partly because participants were afraid to challenge one another, but that fear was becoming unstable. He suggested delaying any further contact with Maya, yet Reed dismissed the advice as weakness.
"They want to ruin me over one lawyer," Reed said. "We're not letting it happen."
Daniels stared at the table. The words revealed more than Reed intended, because the captain was not talking about whether the drugs had been lawfully found. He was talking about winning a struggle for control. Daniels had once accepted Reed's assurance that people targeted by their operation were troublemakers who would otherwise escape consequences. Hearing the same reasoning after watching Olivia handcuffed in the rain made it harder to pretend.
At the outside investigative team's temporary office, a federal attorney named Rebecca Davis reviewed a packet from Sarah and Maya. Davis had worked on organized-crime and public-corruption cases, and she had the calm impatience of someone who preferred admissible evidence to dramatic claims. She listened while Sarah described the Clearwater records, Thomas's old letter, and the similarities among the disputed arrests. Then she asked a series of questions nobody in the family wanted to answer.
"Who created each file? Who handled the original? Which statements are firsthand? Which conclusions rely on other people's descriptions?" she asked. "And how much of the material was obtained by someone who had no authority to access it?"
Sarah answered where she could. Alex explained the provenance of the family-owned files without claiming they established matters outside their scope. Maya admitted that several witness accounts were preliminary and had not been tested under oath. Davis thanked them for being candid, because exaggerated certainty was precisely what an experienced defense lawyer would use to attack a serious investigation.
"Your father's records are important," Davis told Maya. "They support the existence of a line of inquiry before his death. They also point us toward financial information we can seek through proper process. But a prosecution won't rest on the fact that he was suspicious of Clearwater."
"Is there already an investigation?" Maya asked.
Davis hesitated, then answered carefully. "There is an authorized joint investigation into evidence handling and suspected narcotics diversion. I can't give you every detail. I can tell you your sister's arrest has become a serious part of it."